what is to be done?

Published by vegankid | Filed under Safe Spaces, Taking Action

Brownfemipower just published these words:

Yesterday, owukori over at black looks, put up a post about the weeks long violent targeting of women in the Nigerian blogging community by fellow Nigerian bloggers. This targeting has included sexualized, homophobic violence in the form of threats and verbal assaults.

Blogger Mshairi describes some of the assaults:

In the first instance, a blogger described a situation in which a female boss, according to him, was being unreasonable. The derogatory language used to describe the woman left me reeling and had me reaching for the sick bag. The descriptions included “‘ignoramus”’, “spiteful, angry menopausal bitch”’, and “‘ruthless menopausal maniac”’. All that remained was the blogger to call the woman a prostitute. Wait, he did.

In the second instance, another blogger wrote, ““lesbos probably need a dick whipping”. I agree wholeheartedly with a comment left by someone on this post: “Dick-whipping is such a violent way of speaking. It ultimately translates itself into rape.” Later on, the blogger backtracked and said what he meant was that “lesbians would most likely have a change of heart on their sexual orientation if they had mind blowing sex with a guy.”

Soul Searching continues:

Why are our men dreaming up rape fantasies about our women? and worst of all…
Why are some of our women colluding with them on this

Yeah you heard right, some of our women are joining in on this, becoming God’s personal Judge, Jury and executioner of justice on earth. Some of them are even leaving comments wishing that men would rape their fellow women? some just point fingers and say some of the most unbelievable stuff I have ever heard..
with absolutely no shame…

So let me break this down for you, women are being threatened with rape BY BOTH MEN AND WOMEN, lesbians need to be dick slapped, irritating boss’s are prostitutes.

We, as radical politically minded women of color, can not just let fellow women of color sit out in the open to take this shit by themselves. This is the very reason so many of us are coming together to begin with–we wanted a community that didn’t question us, didn’t question our beliefs or our existance. Black Looks, Soul Searching and others are clearly having their very existance challenged in a violent and degrading way. It is time for us now to mobilize and find a way to help out where we can.

What can we do? How can we do it?

Let’s start talking!

In response, i wrote the following: “We, as radical allies, cannot just lurk in the shadows of the blogosphere as such outrageous acts are taking place. We cannot take comfort in our relative privilege as our allies in struggle are attacked. White people, speak up! Men, speak up! Straight people, speak up! The silence of those in struggle is the death of a liberated world.”

I want to open this post up to ideas. Ideas to create a praxis which can be used to effectively counter the oppressive atmosphere that is attempting to sweep through the blogosphere. I want to hear from all allies in struggle. No words are small when spoken from the heart.

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