Anti-Slavery Day

October 18th is the first Anti-slavery day in the UK. But in the UK, as elsewhere in the world, slavery still exists.

Moreover:

Britain’s anti-slavery legislation is now weaker than the rest of Europe’s thanks to the coalition’s decision to opt out of an EU directive on human trafficking. The directive includes an agreed definition of the crime that makes it easier to prosecute offenders and guarantees greater protection to victims. Police and legal experts complain that existing UK trafficking laws make it notoriously hard to prosecute offenders.

There are petitions here and here to ask the Govt not to opt out.

US Army finally issues combat uniforms for women

WTF? How could this take so long?

For years the US Army offered standard-issue unisex ACUs, which sought to neutralize gender differences but were often considered uncomfortable and unwieldy by female troops.

It seems to have taken years to occur to people that slapping the label ‘unisex’ a uniform designed for men does not make it fit women. Sheesh. Nice example of false gender-neutrality, though.

(Thanks, Jender-Parents.)

Michael Kimmel on Yale

An excellent column.

What does it mean to chant “No Means Yes” outside the campus Women’s Center, the place that offers a safe space for women who have been assaulted or abused? What does it mean to target the one place where women might actually feel safe enough to find their own voice, feel strong enough to succeed in a world still marred by gender inequality? It’s a reminder that men still rule, that bro’s will always come before “ho’s”. Even the Women’s Center can’t protect you.

That is, it’s a way to make even the safe unsafe.

We could leave it there, and let the campus judiciary and the blogosphere continue to debate about free speech and hostile environments and hate speech. But I think it would miss another, equally important element–the second half of the chant, “Yes Means Anal.”

This chant assumes that anal sex is not pleasurable for women; that if she says yes to intercourse, you have to go further to an activity that you experience as degrading to her, dominating to her, not pleasurable to her. This second chant is a necessary corollary to the first.

Thanks to feminism, women have claimed the ability to say both “no” and “yes.” Not only have women come to believe that “No Means No,” that they have a right to not be assaulted and raped, but also that they have a right to say “yes” to their own desires, their own sexual agency. Feminism enabled women to find their own sexual voice….

This is confusing to many men, who see sex not as mutual pleasuring, but about the “girl hunt,” a chase, a conquest. She says no, he breaks down her resistance. Sex is a zero-sum game. He wins if she puts out; she loses.

That women can like sex, and especially like good sex, and are capable of evaluating their partners changes the landscape. If women say “yes,” where’s the conquest, where’s the chase, where’s the pleasure? And where’s the feeling that your victory is her defeat? What if she is doing the scoring, not you?

Thus the “Yes Means Anal” part of the chant. Sex has become unsafe for men–women are agentic and evaluate our performances. So if “No Means Yes” attempts to make what is safe for women unsafe, then “Yes Means Anal” makes what is experienced as unsafe for men again safe–back in that comfort zone of conquest and victory. Back to something that is assumed could not possibly be pleasurable for her. It makes the unsafe safe–for men.