THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY ONE

From the kind of law professor we should all hope to have, or should all strive to be:

Premise: You are not paying for my opinion.
Critique: You are not paying me to pretend I don’t have one.

Premise: There is something called “Law” that is objective, fixed, and detached from and unaffected by the society in which it functions.
Critique: Law has no meaning or relevance outside of society. It both shapes and is shaped by the society in which it functions. Law is made by humans. It protects, controls, burdens, and liberates humans, non-human animals, nature, and inanimate physical objects. Like the humans who make it, Law is biased, noble, aspirational, shot-sighted, flawed, messy, unclear, brilliant, and constantly changing. If you think that Law is merely a set of rules to be taught and learned, you are missing the beauty of Law and the point of law school.

Premise: You know more about legal education than I do.
Critique: You don’t.

THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE

This post from Valerie Aurora, Mary Gardiner and Leigh Honeywell is so perfect. In addition to the long list of powerful and important recommendations for doing away with “rock star” culture they’ve put forward, there’s one small thing I’d like to add.

In a world run by rock stars, we need to keep an eye out for the new girl.

Given their disproportionate access to travel opportunities, financial resources and publicity, rock stars are often in the best position to spot new talent. As self-appointed spokespeople for organizations and movements, they are also often the first point of contact for people who are just starting out, or new in town.

This means that rock stars are often unofficial gatekeepers to an entire community or industry. They not only get to decide who’s “in” and who’s “out,” but have privileged access to an endless stream of new victims to choose from. Once “in,” the rock star also has special power to manipulate a newcomer’s experience, role and relationships within the community.

I have rarely seen rock stars promote the work or talent of others, but when they do, it’s often to justify bringing a new potential victim into the fold. In communities that are difficult to access or where newcomers need to be “vouched for,” a rock star’s endorsement often lets a newcomer skip to the front of the line.

Rock stars will leverage their status to take the newcomer places she wouldn’t otherwise have access: intimate meetings, secret channels, private parties.* They will introduce her to other influential, talented and interesting people in the community. Rock stars create an illusion that they alone control entry to this world, and that they are universally loved within it.   

Because rock stars maintain power by managing impressions, the newcomer will rarely be left unattended, and may be kept artificially separate from potential allies. The newcomer is also often the new girl (a younger woman) brought in by a rock star (often a man who has sex with women). She may be rumoured to be, or introduced as, the rock star’s lover——creating additional layers of complexity and vulnerability. (This can also occur in different combinations of genders and sexualities, but this is the most common case.)

“Rock stars love “dating” people they have power over because it makes it easier to abuse or assault them and get away with it.” (from No More Rock Stars)

Even when there’s no illusion of a romantic relationship, that proximity can make it easy to develop a reputation as the rock star’s “new toy” or “sidekick”——words that reinforce sexist stereotypes about women as accessories, as lacking the ability to make meaningful contributions of their own. These labels may mean that newcomers are not taken seriously, or even resented by under-recognized members of a group. Most of all, it can discourage established members who might be critical of the rock star from forging a relationship with the newcomer, further contributing to their isolation.

All of these factors conspire to mean that if the newcomer is subject to manipulation, abuse or violence, there aren’t many options on the table. They may feel indebted to the rock star or incapable of speaking up. They may be convinced that the legitimacy of their membership in the group hinges on loyalty to their abuser, or that they wouldn’t belong without his approval. He may tell them outright that they have no legitimacy in the community because their access is through him. They are faced with a choice: shut up or leave. In either case, it’s an extraordinary loss.

“We have been in this position – of being powerless against rock stars… we have all mourned the spaces that we have left when they have become unliveable because of abuse.” (from No More Rock Stars)

We need to look out for newcomers, and maybe especially for the new girl. Whether through structured peer mentorship, open working groups, or prompt and meaningful integration into affinity groups, newcomers need to be able to forge relationships away from, and with others than the person who brought them in initially. We need to build organizations where volunteer intake and hiring practices are transparent, and where resources are invested to orient newcomers properly. Finally, we need to reject systems that rely on opaque processes, suspicion and star power to determine who belongs——the the kinds of systems that allow rock stars to pick and prey on new victims in the first place.

—

I’m long past being “the new girl,” but I’m young enough to remember the fear and doubt I felt at seventeen. I’m also devastated to realize that I can’t even count how many (talented, brilliant, incredible) women I’ve seen since that time in precisely the same situation: stuck somewhere between shut up and leave. I no longer want to be a bystander in that process, and can do more to make the communities that I’m part of welcoming and safe. I hope this is some small contribution to that process.

New girl, I’ve got your back.

LG

[warm thanks to both Leigh Honeywell and Valerie Aurora for their feedback and comments on this piece — Valerie in particular has expressed willingness to review other posts if you’d like to share your thoughts too]

 

* (or even phone calls with Julian Assange—see Phoenix’s story here)

THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FOUR

Hard to look away from Twitter the past few days, because I’ve watched this happen with half a dozen different activist men in recent years and it’s always the same story. And so, not specifically about the situation at hand, but about every time this happens.

What I’ve learned is that the real test is what happens after the accused makes a statement. One that muddies the waters, takes partial responsibility, questions the stability of his victims, implies ulterior motives. One that exposes a flawed process, or sheds light on true-yet-unflattering internal politics that make things seem “complicated.”

He’s been reflecting carefully, you know. On his values. He was going through a tough time, before this. He is “dismayed” and “dishearted” and “troubled” and “ashamed” and “hurt.” If there is truth to these allegations, if that’s what the victims “believe happened” then he wants to make it right with them. His is a politics of ownership. He is an ally. He is kinky. He is sorry for your misunderstanding.

But he can’t face specific allegations because his lawyer advised him against it. There are no specific allegations to face because his accusers are anonymous. The victims never spoke to him directly: why is that? Why come forward now? There has been an ongoing campaign for some time, you know, to discredit him, to hurt him. That much is probably true. He accepts some wrongdoing. He is humble.

And if only he had been given a chance to clear this whole thing up, but people are so quick to judge. The court of public opinion that built his career turned on him. People don’t have all the facts, but he can’t share them either–the lawyer, remember? Is it progressive to cast people out of our communities like this?

The pitch of these statements is always the same. People will feel discomfort in their hearts but they will retreat anyway. It could be true. That is the point of the genre. He’s taking some space.

The people that matter will be spoken to, quietly. They will tell others how it’s “destroying him,” how he’s suffered enough. It’s “complicated,” but they’re not at liberty to discuss. He’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere.

A year will go by and eventually you’ll notice that he’s consulting again, albeit in a slightly different community. He’s got a new writing gig, he’s on a different conference circuit now. Less public, but still powerful, maybe even more untouchable than he was before. Because you’re not really sure, are you? You weren’t there. Let it go.

THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY ONE

William Gibson in the Paris Review.

GIBSON

It’s harder to imagine the past that went away than it is to imagine the future. What we were prior to our latest batch of technology is, in a way, unknowable. It would be harder to accurately imagine what New York City was like the day before the advent of broadcast television than to imagine what it will be like after life-size broadcast holography comes online. But actually the New York without the television is more mysterious, because we’ve already been there and nobody paid any attention. That world is gone.

My great-grandfather was born into a world where there was no recorded music. It’s very, very difficult to conceive of a world in which there is no possibility of audio recording at all. Some people were extremely upset by the first Edison recordings. It nauseated them, terrified them. It sounded like the devil, they said, this evil unnatural technology that offered the potential of hearing the dead speak. We don’t think about that when we’re driving somewhere and turn on the radio. We take it for granted.

[…….]

In my lifetime I’ve been able to watch completely different narratives of history emerge. The history now of what World War II was about and how it actually took place is radically different from the history I was taught in elementary school. If you read the Victorians writing about themselves, they’re describing something that never existed. The Victorians didn’t think of themselves as sexually repressed, and they didn’t think of themselves as racist. They didn’t think of themselves as colonialists. They thought of themselves as the crown of creation.

Of course, we might be Victorians, too.

INTERVIEWER

The Victorians invented science fiction.

GIBSON

I think the popular perception that we’re a lot like the Victorians is in large part correct. One way is that we’re all constantly in a state of ongoing t­echnoshock, without really being aware of it—it’s just become where we live. The Victorians were the first people to experience that, and I think it made them crazy in new ways. We’re still riding that wave of craziness. We’ve gotten so used to emergent technologies that we get anxious if we haven’t had one in a while.

But if you read the accounts of people who rode steam trains for the first time, for instance, they went a little crazy. They’d traveled fifteen miles an hour, and when they were writing the accounts afterward they struggled to describe that unthinkable speed and what this linear velocity does to a perspective as you’re looking forward. There was even a Victorian medical complaint called “railway spine.”

Emergent technologies were irreversibly altering their landscape. Bleak House is a quintessential Victorian text, but it is also probably the best steam­punk landscape that will ever be. Dickens really nailed it, especially in those proto-Ballardian passages in which everything in nature has been damaged by heavy industry. But there were relatively few voices like Dickens then. Most people thought the progress of industry was all very exciting. Only a few were saying, Hang on, we think the birds are dying.

THREE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN

From The Sixth to Last Human Chat Ever Recorded, by Debbie Urbanski.

You’re SS’d right?

…

How’d you get on this list then?

…

There’s no one else on it even, there used to be millions.

…

Are you sad it’s all going to be over soon?

…

I think I will be a little sad. Like drinking my last can of protie yesterday was sad. Partly because no one is going to know. Just like no one knew I had finished my last protie until I told you now. I have so many stupid secrets like that.

Or maybe it will be a relief.

Remember how beautiful they said the world is going to become once we vanish?