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The new year is almost upon us, and so that means that there are many people preparing to make New Year’s Resolutions. In past years, I would resolve to exercise more, sleep less or stop to smell the roses more. For 2010, I have nothing so ethereal. For 2010, my one and only resolution is to let New Jersey know what a negative message Tucker Max brings.
Who is this Tucker Max, you may ask? And how does Tucker Max have me so riled up? If you have a minute, do a quick reconnaissance mission over to Mr. Max’s blog site at http://www.tuckermax.com. If you can stand to look at it for more than 15 minutes, I give you a lot of credit. If you can’t stand his dribble for that long, here are some of the choicer quotes:
Tucker Max disparages women’s rights to sexual consent and openly speaks of acts that fit the legal definition of sexual assault, specifically, “I’m trying to get you drunk, so you can’t consent to sex anymore.”
Tucker Max wants to decide who deserves human rights. An example from his book, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell: “The lowest of the low is a fat woman with a loud personality. This woman is generally just so annoying that you have to actively restrain yourself from kicking her in the crotch and stomping on her throat until she drowns on her own blood. There is no insult too mean or crude for her, and basic human rights do not apply to her.”
Tucker Max promotes the sexual objectification of women. For example, here’s a quote from the New York Times: “When a journalism student from Paramus, New Jersey asked if she could take a photograph with him, he agreed, and pressed his hand into her cleavage when the camera flash went off.”
Tucker Max spreads an epidemic of hateful ideology that denigrates women, people of color, and disabled people, and perpetrates verbal, emotional and psychological abuse and promotes sexual violence and physical abuse of vulnerable people.
Tucker Max is coming to New Jersey in January. And you’re paying for it.
Specifically, on January 20, 2010, he’s coming to The College of New Jersey, having been invited by the College Union Board, the internal college activities board. The College of New Jersey is reportedly paying him over $15,000 to come to the campus and promote his book and show his movie.
The College of New Jersey is funded in part through tax payers’ money from the Commission on Higher Education, and the College Union Board is financed in part through student fees that go to the college. The College is also funded by alumni who donate. As a community, is this where we want to be putting our money?
The irony of all of this is that The College of New Jersey also funds one of the most successful anti-violence initiatives on any college campus in New Jersey. Through the Office of Anti-Violence Initiatives, Jackie Deitch-Stackhouse has successfully begun a Green Dot campaign. Green Dot is a strategy to end power based personal violence such as sexual assault, dating violence, stalking and domestic violence. More about that program can be found at http://www.tcnj.edu/~greendot/.
1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men in New Jersey face sexual violence in their lives, and Tucker Max treats sexual violence like it’s a joke and openly blogs about having committed such acts. This event is January is supporting and contributing to a culture that promotes and encourages sexual violence against women. What if this was you? Your sister? Your girlfriend? Your friend? Tucker Max makes light of real people’s experiences, and by doing so, robs them of the voice they deserve to have.
Statistics show that nearly 95% of men on college campuses DO NOT commit rape, and 75% of college men are uncomfortable with other men’s sexist behavior. People who don’t support this event are automatically supporting thousands of women that are raped and sexually abused every year, many of which occur on college campus. If you openly oppose this event, you will be supporting thousands of people of color and people who are disabled, and you will send the message that you do not tolerate the rape or abuse of women and the disparagement of people of color and people who are disabled.
If you have even a minute to do something, and want to send a message loud and clear, below is the link to send a message to the TCNJ president and the Chair of the TCNJ Board of Trustees about the Tucker Max event in January. Please email this link to whoever you think would be interested: http://capwiz.com/njcasa/issues/alert/?alertid=14483841
And make your own New Year’s resolution to talk to people about why Tucker Max is hurtful and hateful to people in our communities. It’s certainly an easier and more important resolution than that one to sleep less.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
I Stand on the Bra Straps of Giants
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” – Isaac Newton
To paraphrase Isaac Newton, if I have seen further it is because I stand on the bra straps of giants. Those bra straps have been on the shoulders of some powerful and forceful women, women who weren’t afraid to make a change, talk about how the world could be different, be bold enough to request a place at the table. In some instances, I stand on the bare shoulders of women, like the ones who destroyed their bras on the Atlantic City boardwalk in 1969.
Let me tell you a story. Like all good stories, it starts a long time ago, in 1975 to be exact. This was six years after the famous Miss America protest in 1969, when Carol Hanisch and some other women who were part of a small group called the New York Radical Women threw their bras, and girdles, mops, and pots and pans into a garbage can on the Atlantic City boardwalk. They didn’t actually burn bras, but the media, looking for a sensational angle, latched onto the idea that these women were “bra burners” and that myth was created. A “bra burner” quickly became the moniker for a radical feminist. Or maybe just a feminist. Or maybe a gay woman. Or maybe someone who just believed that women should have equal opportunity with men. Each ideology was just as ground-breaking, shocking and sensational as the next.
In 1975, a group of women who were natives to Atlantic County decided that, as the civil rights movement had changed the country, so too could the women’s rights movement. One of the greatest needs was to provide battered women and children with shelter and safety. These women, with their own families to care for, with their own careers to consider, founded the Atlantic County Women’s Center. Were they inspired by the protest of the “meat market,” as the New York Radical Women considered the Miss America pageant? Possibly. For six years, a sea change was happening in the way society viewed women. Status quo didn’t work anymore, and women in Atlantic County were no less impacted than women in counties across the nation.
Change was sweeping the nation, and this included southern New Jersey. Atlantic City was morphing from an economic dead-zone, as portrayed during the 1964 Democratic convention to a city soon to be the Monte Carlo of the East Coast. These women followed the mantra of the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead, who spent her childhood summers in Hammonton – “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
2010 marks the 35th anniversary of that founding. The Atlantic County Women’s Center has been a place created by women for women for three and a half decades. Through seven American presidents, eleven New Jersey governors, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of the electronic age, the Women’s Center has stood as the only organization in Atlantic County focused on improving the quality of life for women and their families.
Does that mean that we don’t provide services to men? Are we, in fact, those preverbal bra burners? We provide services to men. We provide services to children. We provide services to families. We provide services to people and families that fall in the margins and fall through the cracks.
All of the services we provide are built around improving the lives of women – so, we work with batterers in the Alternatives to Violence Program, because we know that, for every person with battering behavior, there is survivor of that abuse. Working to change the behavior of the batterer benefits the survivor, even in small ways. The services we provide to families help women as well, even if the family is made up of men, women and children. We recognize that women have the lion’s share of the childcare responsibility while typically bringing home the smaller portion of the “bacon.” Childcare resources and referrals are a large part of what we do.
Our job readiness programs, Home to Work and Self Sufficiency, recognize that, in order for a woman to have a place at the table, she has to first have the job, the professional clothes and the transportation for her to get to the table. These programs help people who need assistance with resumes, job searches, and educational advocacy.
For 35 years, the Women’s Center has been creating a place for us in Atlantic County. Although who that “us” is has changed…when the founding mothers came together, it was women and children who were escaping abusive homes. Today, the Violence Intervention Program still offers confidential shelter, a 24 hour hotline, advocacy and community education – for women, men, children, gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered individuals. These services are for survivors and their loved ones – all survivors and their loved ones.
Soon it was recognized that, if a woman’s childcare didn’t work, neither did she. This idea today has is expanded to families – in an economy where both partners work, if a family’s childcare doesn’t work, neither does that family. Before too long the Women’s Center realized that, to keep up with a society that was evolving, it too would have to evolve. Today this is done by exploring the transferable skills people have, how to turn these into a new job, or a better job, or a chance at an education.
During 2010, we are celebrating our 35th anniversary and paying homage to the bra straps that have come before us. We are also celebrating the place we have created – not the physical space, not the building. Instead we are celebrating the place we have worked to carve out in Atlantic County and southern New Jersey – for women, for children, for people who are marginalized or invisible, regardless of gender, because of need, not in spite of it. We are celebrating the place that we have at the table – be it the kitchen table, the playroom table or the boardroom table.
And we are looking forward to providing the shoulders (and the bra straps) for the next 35 years.
-- Erin O'Hanlon
(Erin O'Hanlon is the Coordinator of Community Initiatives at the Atlantic County Women's Center. This is the blog of the Atlantic County Women's Center, a non-profit organization in Atlantic County, New Jersey, that has been creating a place for us since 1975. For more information, check out our website at acwc.org)
To paraphrase Isaac Newton, if I have seen further it is because I stand on the bra straps of giants. Those bra straps have been on the shoulders of some powerful and forceful women, women who weren’t afraid to make a change, talk about how the world could be different, be bold enough to request a place at the table. In some instances, I stand on the bare shoulders of women, like the ones who destroyed their bras on the Atlantic City boardwalk in 1969.
Let me tell you a story. Like all good stories, it starts a long time ago, in 1975 to be exact. This was six years after the famous Miss America protest in 1969, when Carol Hanisch and some other women who were part of a small group called the New York Radical Women threw their bras, and girdles, mops, and pots and pans into a garbage can on the Atlantic City boardwalk. They didn’t actually burn bras, but the media, looking for a sensational angle, latched onto the idea that these women were “bra burners” and that myth was created. A “bra burner” quickly became the moniker for a radical feminist. Or maybe just a feminist. Or maybe a gay woman. Or maybe someone who just believed that women should have equal opportunity with men. Each ideology was just as ground-breaking, shocking and sensational as the next.
In 1975, a group of women who were natives to Atlantic County decided that, as the civil rights movement had changed the country, so too could the women’s rights movement. One of the greatest needs was to provide battered women and children with shelter and safety. These women, with their own families to care for, with their own careers to consider, founded the Atlantic County Women’s Center. Were they inspired by the protest of the “meat market,” as the New York Radical Women considered the Miss America pageant? Possibly. For six years, a sea change was happening in the way society viewed women. Status quo didn’t work anymore, and women in Atlantic County were no less impacted than women in counties across the nation.
Change was sweeping the nation, and this included southern New Jersey. Atlantic City was morphing from an economic dead-zone, as portrayed during the 1964 Democratic convention to a city soon to be the Monte Carlo of the East Coast. These women followed the mantra of the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead, who spent her childhood summers in Hammonton – “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
2010 marks the 35th anniversary of that founding. The Atlantic County Women’s Center has been a place created by women for women for three and a half decades. Through seven American presidents, eleven New Jersey governors, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of the electronic age, the Women’s Center has stood as the only organization in Atlantic County focused on improving the quality of life for women and their families.
Does that mean that we don’t provide services to men? Are we, in fact, those preverbal bra burners? We provide services to men. We provide services to children. We provide services to families. We provide services to people and families that fall in the margins and fall through the cracks.
All of the services we provide are built around improving the lives of women – so, we work with batterers in the Alternatives to Violence Program, because we know that, for every person with battering behavior, there is survivor of that abuse. Working to change the behavior of the batterer benefits the survivor, even in small ways. The services we provide to families help women as well, even if the family is made up of men, women and children. We recognize that women have the lion’s share of the childcare responsibility while typically bringing home the smaller portion of the “bacon.” Childcare resources and referrals are a large part of what we do.
Our job readiness programs, Home to Work and Self Sufficiency, recognize that, in order for a woman to have a place at the table, she has to first have the job, the professional clothes and the transportation for her to get to the table. These programs help people who need assistance with resumes, job searches, and educational advocacy.
For 35 years, the Women’s Center has been creating a place for us in Atlantic County. Although who that “us” is has changed…when the founding mothers came together, it was women and children who were escaping abusive homes. Today, the Violence Intervention Program still offers confidential shelter, a 24 hour hotline, advocacy and community education – for women, men, children, gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered individuals. These services are for survivors and their loved ones – all survivors and their loved ones.
Soon it was recognized that, if a woman’s childcare didn’t work, neither did she. This idea today has is expanded to families – in an economy where both partners work, if a family’s childcare doesn’t work, neither does that family. Before too long the Women’s Center realized that, to keep up with a society that was evolving, it too would have to evolve. Today this is done by exploring the transferable skills people have, how to turn these into a new job, or a better job, or a chance at an education.
During 2010, we are celebrating our 35th anniversary and paying homage to the bra straps that have come before us. We are also celebrating the place we have created – not the physical space, not the building. Instead we are celebrating the place we have worked to carve out in Atlantic County and southern New Jersey – for women, for children, for people who are marginalized or invisible, regardless of gender, because of need, not in spite of it. We are celebrating the place that we have at the table – be it the kitchen table, the playroom table or the boardroom table.
And we are looking forward to providing the shoulders (and the bra straps) for the next 35 years.
-- Erin O'Hanlon
(Erin O'Hanlon is the Coordinator of Community Initiatives at the Atlantic County Women's Center. This is the blog of the Atlantic County Women's Center, a non-profit organization in Atlantic County, New Jersey, that has been creating a place for us since 1975. For more information, check out our website at acwc.org)
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